Oct. 16, 2001 – With tourism down around the world, competition to attract visitors is beginning to ratchet up -– including from the territory’s Caribbean neighbors.
To help its member nations attract tourists in the wake of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on New York and the Pentagon, the Caribbean Community, or CARICOM, agreed at an emergency meeting over the weekend to undertake an $18 million tourism promotional and marketing campaign. The effort will consist primarily of television advertisements in the United States, United Kingdom and Canada.
CARICOM's chair, Bahamas Prime Minister Hubert A. Ingraham, said $7.2 million of the $18 million tourism campaign budget will be spent between now and Dec. 31. He said the CARICOM countries will contribute $4.5 million toward the campaign and other Caribbean Tourism Organization member states will give $5.5 million, while the private sector will pour in $8 million.
John Bell, CTO director general, told the British Broadcasting Company that the effort is desperately needed -– tourism in the Caribbean is down 50 percent -– but he said the organization’s members should be working with an annual budget of $50 million to $60 million. He pointed to Hawaii’s $65 million advertising campaign as a example.
"When you see occupancy fall from 50 percent to 60 percent down to the teens and single digits, you know you have grief," Bell said. "If we don’t get some real serious pickup with new bookings, I’m very pessimistic about the future."
In response to the downturn in tourism following the terrorist attacks and the efforts of other destinations to increase visits, the V.I. government will launch a $6.5 million advertising and marketing campaign to promote the territory. The new campaign will be in addition to another $17 million expenditure on advertising and marketing this year.
The advertisements will begin next week with spots on television networks such as CNN, The Weather Channel and ESPN; newspaper ads; billboards in the largest cities on the East Coast; advertisements on 570 New York trains; and radio spots in the 12 largest markets of the East Coast and Midwest.
Meanwhile, Sen. Alicia "Chucky" Hansen noted that her legislation appropriating $4 million to the territory’s Tourism Advertising Revolving Fund was approved by Gov. Charles W. Turnbull when he signed the the 2002 Omnibus Bill last week.
Hansen said the $4 million will be focused on TV advertising for the territory in order to boost sagging hotel occupancy, which she said is currently running around 10 percent.
"Not only will this mean disaster for many of our hotels and guest houses who will not be able to meet fixed costs, including mortgage payments and utility payments, but the low occupancy rate will mean less monies from the hotel occupancy tax going into the Tourism Advertising and Promotion Fund," Hansen said. "This, in turn, will result in less advertising and promotion for the Virgin Islands as a tourism destination at a time when our competitors are outspending us by four to one and sometimes even as much as by 10 to one."
CARICOM is made up of Antigua and Barbuda, the Bahamas, Barbados, Belize, Dominica, Grenada, Guyana, Haiti, Jamaica, Montserrat, St. Kitts and Nevis, St. Lucia, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Suriname and Trinidad and Tobago.
CARICOM observers include Aruba, Bermuda, the Cayman Islands, Colombia, the Dominican Republic, Mexico, the Netherlands Antilles, Puerto Rico and Venezuela. CARICOM associate members are Anguilla, the British Virgin Islands and the Turks and Caicos Islands.
